The Midlife Parking Lot
I don't pay much attention to my dreams.
Most mornings they disappear before my feet hit the ground. But every once in a while, a dream lingers. It follows me into my first cup of coffee, tapping me on the shoulder and refusing to be ignored.
This dream did exactly that.
I found myself driving an oversized SUV. It was comfortable. Familiar. Easy to drive. I felt capable behind the wheel.
Yet I spent the entire dream trying to park it.
Over and over again.
I wasn't crashing. I wasn't lost. I wasn't even anxious about driving. I simply could not seem to find the right place to stop. I wanted to park the car, get out, and move on with my day. I had somewhere to be. Things to do. A life waiting for me.
But something kept preventing me from settling into a parking spot.
As I reflected on the dream, another detail stood out.
There was a bright blue van nearby, a smaller European-style vehicle with an incredible turn radius. It could maneuver effortlessly. It seemed agile, adaptable, and capable of changing direction without getting stuck.
I found myself waiting for it.
Watching it.
Studying it.
And for some reason, I couldn't move forward until it did.
Should We Pay Attention to Our Dreams?
Whether you believe dreams are deeply symbolic or simply the brain's way of processing information, most experts agree that our minds continue important work while we sleep.
Dreams can help us sort through emotions, integrate experiences, process uncertainty, and make sense of transitions that our conscious minds haven't fully organized yet.
As a therapist, I've often encouraged people to pay attention when a dream feels significant. Not because every dream contains a hidden message, but because the emotional impact can reveal something important.
If you wake up feeling moved, unsettled, curious, relieved, or emotional, it can be helpful to sit with the dream rather than dismiss it.
Write it down and get granular.
Who was there?
What were you feeling?
What stood out?
Sometimes the meaning isn't found in the dream itself but in the associations it sparks.
As I revisited this dream, another detail emerged. I remember feeling as though I was wearing thick, dark sunglasses. My vision felt cloudy. It was difficult to see clearly. It was a perfect metaphor for the brain fog, uncertainty, and mental clutter that so many women experience during midlife.
The Midlife Parking Lot
Cars often symbolize how we move through life. They represent autonomy, identity, direction, and control. Parking a car, however, is different from driving one. Parking requires us to choose. To settle. To position ourselves. To stop searching long enough to decide where we belong.
Many women arrive in midlife and discover that they have spent decades driving. Building careers. Raising children. Supporting partners. Managing households. Achieving goals. Meeting expectations. Keeping everyone else moving forward. They have become exceptionally skilled at navigating life, often without stopping long enough to ask themselves whether the destination still fits.
Then something shifts.
Children leave home. Careers evolve or lose their appeal. Aging parents require more attention. Relationships change. Health concerns emerge. Hormones fluctuate. The roles and identities that once felt so clear begin to blur. What once provided certainty may no longer feel meaningful.
It is often during this season that women begin asking deeper questions: Who am I now? What do I want? What matters most to me in this next chapter?
The parking spot that fit perfectly twenty years ago may no longer fit the woman you have become.
Perhaps that is why I kept circling in the dream. I wasn't trying to learn how to drive. I wasn't lost. I was trying to determine where I belonged. I was searching for a place that felt aligned with who I am now, not who I used to be.
The Blue Van
The blue van fascinates me because it felt so different from the vehicle I was driving. My SUV was comfortable, familiar, and reliable. It represented something that had served me well. I felt confident driving it and had no desire to trade it in.
Yet I couldn't stop noticing the small bright-blue van nearby.
What stood out wasn't its appearance. It was the way it moved. It could turn effortlessly. It could maneuver in tight spaces. It seemed agile and adaptable, capable of changing direction without struggle.
As I reflected on the dream, I began to wonder if the van represented a different way of approaching this stage of life. Not better. Not worse. Just different.
Many of us enter midlife carrying skills and identities that have served us for decades. We know how to work hard. We know how to persevere. We know how to shoulder responsibility. Those strengths matter. But sometimes the next chapter requires additional skills: flexibility, experimentation, curiosity, and the willingness to change direction when circumstances change.
The blue van seemed to embody that capacity.
I also find it interesting that I was waiting for it. Watching it. Studying it. There is a question hidden inside that image: What am I waiting for?
Am I waiting for certainty before making a change? Am I waiting for permission? Am I waiting for someone else to show me how to navigate this season before I trust myself to move forward?
Midlife often teaches us that there is no perfect map. The women who thrive are not necessarily the ones with the clearest plan. They are the ones who learn how to pivot. They become more comfortable with uncertainty. They stop demanding perfection from themselves and start experimenting with what might be possible.
Looking back, I wonder if the blue van represented an emerging part of me. A part that understands that reinvention is not about finding the perfect answer. It is about becoming more adaptable as the questions evolve.
Perhaps the goal isn't to find the perfect parking spot at all.
Clearing the Fog
As I sat with the dream, I realized that the challenge wasn't simply finding a parking space.
The challenge was seeing clearly.
One of the details that stayed with me after I woke up was the feeling that I was wearing thick, dark sunglasses. My vision felt cloudy, as though there was a layer between me and the world around me. I remember struggling to clean them, wanting desperately to see more clearly, yet never quite getting there.
It was a perfect metaphor for what so many women experience during midlife.
Brain fog. Mental clutter. Decision fatigue. Hormonal changes. The exhaustion that comes from carrying responsibilities for years, sometimes decades. Even the most capable women can find themselves feeling less certain than they once did. Not because they are incapable, but because they are navigating a season of profound transition.
The fog of midlife is not always physiological. Sometimes it is emotional. Sometimes it is relational. Sometimes it comes from carrying outdated stories about who we are supposed to be.
Many of us have spent years seeing ourselves through lenses that were handed to us by family, culture, workplaces, relationships, or societal expectations. We learned what success should look like. We learned what a good mother should do. We learned what a successful career should become. We learned what aging should mean.
Over time, those lenses can become so familiar that we stop noticing them.
Then midlife arrives and asks us to look again.
What if the story you've been living no longer fits?
What if the goals that motivated you at thirty are different from what matters at fifty?
What if the life you are building now requires a different perspective altogether?
Clearing the fog is not about having all the answers. It is about becoming willing to question the assumptions that have guided you for years. It is about slowing down long enough to notice what is true for you today instead of operating on autopilot from yesterday's beliefs.
Midlife is often portrayed as a crisis. I see it differently.
It can be a homecoming.
A season of removing what no longer serves us and reconnecting with who we are beneath the expectations, roles, and obligations we have accumulated over the years.
The fog does not lift all at once. It clears gradually through reflection, curiosity, experimentation, and self-awareness. Each small insight sharpens the picture. Each honest conversation reveals a little more. Each new experience helps us see ourselves from a different angle.
And when the fog begins to lift, we often discover that the path forward was there all along. We simply needed to slow down long enough to see it.
The Questions That Help Us Pivot
When women tell me they are ready for a change but don't know where to begin, I rarely suggest they make a dramatic decision overnight.
Instead, I encourage reflection.
One of my favorite tools comes from The Artist's Way. These questions help uncover what is asking for attention beneath the surface.
If you are standing in your own midlife parking lot wondering what comes next, spend some time with these:
The biggest lack in my life is...
The greatest joy in my life is...
My largest time commitment is...
As I play more, I work...
I feel guilty that I am...
I worry that...
If my dreams come true, my family and friends will...
I sabotage myself so people will...
If I let myself feel it, I'm angry that...
What part of myself is asking to emerge in this next chapter?
These questions won't provide instant answers.
But they can help clear the fog.
They can reveal where you've been circling.
They can uncover what you've been waiting for.
And they can help you identify the places where more flexibility, curiosity, and courage are needed.
Midlife is not about finding the perfect parking spot.
It is about learning to trust yourself enough to keep moving, keep adjusting, and keep exploring until you discover what fits.
The beautiful thing about midlife is that you are still behind the wheel.
